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Abstract
The present research investigated whether physical suffering would cause people to feel ostracized even when they are accepted by their social interaction partners. Participants were instructed to place their hands either into a circulated cold water bath (to induce physical pain) or into a water bath at room temperature while they were either included or ostracized during an online ball tossing game—Cyberball. We found that physical pain led people to experience social pain, while they are socially accepted during a social interaction. Our findings suggest that people with physical suffering may need extra attention in social interactions to satisfy their threatened social needs.
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Notes
1. The data were collected at two time points (phase 1: 53 participants; phase 2: 85 participants).
2. The covariate only significantly influenced negative affect, F(1, 133) = 4.99, p = .03. The covariate did not influence other dependent measures, F's(1, 133) < 1.94, p's>.16. Moreover, removing the covariate in the analyses did not substantially alter the results. Because previous studies examining the potential interaction between physical and social pain tend to control for individuals' preexisting physical pain sensitivity (e.g., DeWall & Baumeister, Citation2006), we follow this practice by reporting our findings by controlling participants' preexisting pain sensitivity.
3. As we collected the data in the separate phases, we conducted a 2 × 2 × 2 ANOVA to examine whether phase would interact and affect our results reported in the main text. No three-way interactions in all of the measures were statistically significant, F's(1, 130) < 1.94, p's>.16. Therefore, we reported the combined data in the main text for the sake of charity. Nevertheless, for the data of phase 1, we got a significant interaction effect on belonging, but the interaction effects on the other three needs were not significant. Moreover, we got a significant interaction effect on perceived percentage of ball tosses received. Perceived percentage of ball tosses received also mediated the interactive effect of physical and social pain manipulation on belonging. However, the interaction effect on percentage of ball tosses received and the mediation effect was no longer significant when we combined the data from two phases.
4. The interaction effect on the overall four needs was still significant when both positive affect and negative affect were controlled.